Customer Reviews

The Leprechaun's Gold

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
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There's so much to like about this book I'm not sure where to begin. First off the author/illustrator team of Pamela Duncan Edwards and Henry Cole is well known for their many popular collaborations including, Some Smug Slug, and Clara Caterpillar. The Leprechaun's Gold easily upholds their fine reputation. Edwards's writing is so fluid it flows off the tongue.

The text doesn't rhyme, but there is a lilt as the words spill from page to page. This is not a short book. It takes about 7 or 8 minutes to read aloud, but the story is appealing and actually humorous in areas. The Leprechaun's Gold is recommended for children 4 to 7 years, which I deem appropriate not only in content, but in vocabulary as well.

The illustrations are eye-catching. Cole uses watercolor as a base and adds either color pencils, or pastels on top of the paint for added detail and contrast. The result is very rich, deep hues that pop off the pages.

As an added bonus Cole includes a hide and seek quality that we love in picture books. At the end of the story, the author challenges the reader to find all 16-four-leaf clovers hidden throughout the pages. My son was so intrigued he spent close to an hour looking for all those silly clovers. The Leprechaun's Gold is a remarkable book that has the potential to teach several lessons about greed, and egoism to kindness and forgiveness.

I teach 1st grade and every year my students love this book. It is the perfect representation of the spirit of Leprechauns.

I am an elementary education major and am planning to use this book in one of my direct teaching lessons. The story will entrance the third graders and learn a lesson in the meantime. Great story for St. Patrick's Day.

I bought this book to share a bit about leprechauns and Ireland around St. Patrick's Day with the children I taught at a daycare. I loved the story, but as we read the story, we all noticed that there was a four leaf clover on each page. So, besides enjoying the story, we also had the fun of going back through the story to find all the four leaf clovers. After we read it as a group, several of the boys asked to look through the book on their own. So, this story is a winner in my book!

I had ordered several books for St. Patrick's Day from Amazon that I was planning on reading to my grandchildren. With background as a preschool teacher I felt I had been careful in my selections and had found the best of the available books. When I visited the grandkids on the day before St. Patrick's Day I brought along a pile of the newly arrived books and we enjoyed reading them together. However, somehow in my ordering I missed this one. Luckily my daughter had purchased it because the kids love it and after reading the story (and finding the shamrocks on each page) we had to go back through and find the shamrocks again, not once, but twice. The story has good values to teach without feeling heavy-handed in the process and the illustrations are rich and inviting. I've got it on my wishlist for my next Amazon order.

A great story about an old man and a young man who play the harp. The old man works out of common decency and the younger man is tempted by greed. Well let the leprechauns take care of it.